There's a new chick in town

Shiva Antare Sur Lassche

24th of August, 2007

Born at 14:10 in the Bronovo Hospital in The Hague

3.12 Kgs and 51 cm long




Mom & Daughter are doing fine

(teh Daddy too)

and a little movie....

Tough Questions

Uncovering urban lifestyle, contemporary trends and other (Canadian) peculiarities from a totally biased and nonobjective European perspective. Infiltration, intrigues, wonder and more ...

Next week I’m to report back to “de Dutch”, as it affectionately has become known here in Canadia. Not only will I get my evaluation on the infiltration process, but also we (the SO & me) are welcoming a new life to this cozily overcrowded planetoid. Therefore, things may get a little quiet on this end of the blogosphere for a while… or even worse: it may end up filled with baby shots.

unrelated random picture: it's my huge vacuum, the laundry sneaked in on this picture as well

In the meantime, this upcoming event offers yet another appropriate opportunity for some reflection.

One day, sooner or later our offspring is going to wonder what ‘we’ did for him / her. And by ‘we’ I mean us; I mean you, me, them. What are the defining moments of our generation and how do we evaluate these against previous generations?

To put that in perspective, our parental genetic pool achieved some remarkable things in ‘their’ time. ‘They’ put men on the moon. Feminists liberated the women (and enslaved and sissified man). Reason ended the oppression (segregation) of religion (in the Netherlands). Conspiracy killed JFK.

Europe was lifted onto its feet through the Marshall plan and begat prosperity in the West. Prosperity meant a car for everyone, mass-media TV and planes. However, Prosperity brought its long time lover, Exploitation. The two happily polluted and drained our blue little globe.
Europe saw the birth of the European Union, effectively ending the good old tradition of waging war on ones neighbours. War, deprived of any meaningful job in Europe, found a new occupation somewhat more to the east of Europe, where Israel's birth (and continuing existence) was far from painful.

Hippies and sexual revolution. The Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, Jimmy Hendrix.

This picture makes an awesome but totally unrelated wallpaper for your desktop.

So, let’s make up the balance for our generation, starting off with the not-so-pretty list... you know the things we should find a way to blame the previous generation for:

• Paris Hilton, Britney Spears. However, we pass the blame to their parents.
• George W. Bush’s War of Terror. 9/11. Iraq. We could also blame his parents.
• Global warming. Sure, our parents gave us the bad example. Sure, we were warned. Somehow that didn’t stop us from driving those cars and dumping inconvenient stinky stuff all over the place.
  
• The incident on that square in China. Not so nice.
• The beauty obsession, and ironically, the growing number of obese people.
• Excessive commercial greed. Patent frenzy, the breakdown of public commodities.
• The demise of proper language and the rise of 1337-speak. (QFT, me <- ROFLed @ this !1!11!1!one!11!)
• When is AIDs going to be a “just a minor inconvenience”?
• Reality TV shows.
• The Yugoslavian war, Rwandan murders, Ethiopian famines and whatever else was not 'commercially' viable but morally unacceptable.
  
• lolcats
  

The things we can happily and most proudly claim:

• We ended the Cold War. Less chance of an all out nuclear war is generally considered a good state of being
• The digital revolution, including the Internet, email, mobile communications, mass storage dvds / cds, wiki, and of course, mlassche.blogspot.com
• Genetic engineering cloned a sheep and probably a whole new generation of North Korean rulers.
  
• Despite what those Brits think, England is no longer an island, as ‘we’ connected it to France.
  
• Iran and Iraq are no longer in open war… though it’s debatable if their current status is much better.
• The introduction of the Euro took away a lot of headaches while traveling through Euroland.
• Apartheid ended. Mandela was released.
• Some utterly creative brilliance: Transformers, the Simpsons, Star wars, LoTR movies, Aliens, South Park, Beavis and Butthead.
• We ended the horrids of the 80s music and found the simple beauty of grunge.
  
• Smoking is finally and recognized as something universally bad for the general health. Although some countries still are taking time to recognize this within their borders.
  
• Expansion of the Global Market and cultural intermixing. Although it remains to be seen if the rise of China and India will eventually be a good thing for our planet – the West made (and is still making) a mess out of things… why will they be different?
• Angelina Jolie, Jenifer Anniston, Pointy Ears.

It's most likely an incomplete and subjective list, possibly even wrong and not so impressive at all. So when questioned by my offspring, I guess I will resort to the tricks of our ancestors and selectively chose which item of what list goes to what generation. Yeah, that will work... or as our future genetic copies will say: Generation X FTW LOL !1!!1!eleven!1!

Are you ready for teh War ? George is.

The Epic Battle

Uncovering urban lifestyle, contemporary trends and other (Canadian) peculiarities from a totally biased and nonobjective European perspective. Infiltration, intrigues, wonder and more ...

Being in the infiltration business gives one some unique opportunities and insights. This week, I managed to uncover that age old mystery: What does Sinterklaas / Santa Claus do when it's Summer ?

Around the fifth of December, Caucasian Holland slips into a frenzy. Parents rush to the stores to collect as many presents as they can for their offspring. None of their efforts and spending will be rewarded or recognized, as their spoiled brats think these gifts come from a bearded old dude called Sinterklaas (Sint Nicolas). Ironically, it's the parents who keep up the lie to their little clones and tell them that these gifts were brought from Spain to Holland by this Sint entity.

There's no loss though. In the end everyone wins: the kids have fancy new toys, the parents get a highly effective tool to manipulate their kids for two months in a year and the stores collect huge piles of Dutch Euros. Finally, the real Sinterklaas thinks it's all fine and dandy. He is the kids' favorite and doesn't have to leave Spain to that cold forsaken country to ride that shitty old stubborn mare. In fact, since everybody thinks he doesn't really exists, he enjoys some fantastic tax benefits.

Naturally, this commercial endeavor inspired the far West to come up with something similar. However, the idea that some old Spanish geezer invades Canadia on an old barge to drop off some presents, is a hard sell to the more critical Canadian youngsters. To give the story some more credit, the Northern Americans decided that instead, he comes from around the corner, the North Pole. Because the seas freeze up during the winter months, the boat would have gotten nowhere, so this Sint flies. On a sled. Pulled by deer. Of which one has a blinky red light on his nose. Much more believable. Yes, Santa Claus it's you !

Apparently, the real Sint got a bit pissed off by this whole affair. Not only was his job taken and his identity stolen and warped into this -in his words- "Santa Clown", but they also implied his boat couldn't pull it off. To show who they're dealing with, the Sint left his cozy coastal beach house and set off a course towards ... Vancouver. As soon as the Santa Claus found out about the Sint´s plans, he demanded his gay cronies (*) to fix him a boat as well...

Thus Sint and Santa meet every year in the English bay of Vancouver to duke it out. To preserve their identities, they enter this fierce competition under the flags of Canadia and Spain. There's also a Chinese delegation. Evidently, the Chinese have some sort of Sinterklaas / Santa Claus as well (ChinKlaas?), who also feels mortally offended by the fact that there are people claiming that they are him..

In good tradition of these Saints, there's no real loss, it's the public who wins. The kids get to see some spectacular fireworks, the parents get to manipulate their offspring into some decent behaviour for a while and the stores actually get some visitors during the nightly hours...

Too bad for Sinterklaas the tax collectors got a trace on him now...

(*) Sinterklaas has helpers called "Pieten", which in good old European racist fashion are black people. Because this would be politically incorrect, the Americanos set up Santa Claus with a bunch of elves, which we all know are very happy people... In the end, you can only have so much political correctheid.

conspiracy ... conspiracy ... conspiracy